The state of Alabama has no shortage of reasons to stop putting people to death or at least take a break from executions. Now, it can add a shortage of a key lethal injection drug to the lengthy list.

The sedative sodium thiopental has become scarce because its only U.S. manufacturer stopped making it. States that use the death penalty have been scrambling at home and abroad to score new supplies of the drug, and Alabama got its most recent batch from the state of Tennessee.

Attorneys for an Alabama death row inmate scheduled to be executed in less than four weeks have asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate whether the state illegally obtained its supply of the execution drug sodium thiopental.

Please contact Governor Robert Bentley and ask him to stay this execution and all others and to institute a moratorium during which Alabama's capital punishment system could be thoroughly studied and proposals implemented.

I thought that as a physician, Gov. Robert Bentley would view capital punishment differently than previous governors. Surely, as a physician, he would view the death penalty as an inhumane act, or at least as an uncertain one, I thought.

Alabama prison officials carried out the execution of death row inmate William Glenn Boyd using sodium thiopental as one of the drugs in the lethal injection.

Prison spokesman Brian Corbett said the Department of Corrections has enough of the drug to carry out two more executions that have been requested by the attorney general's office. Sodium thiopental was used in the execution of Boyd Thursday night at Holman Prison in Atmore.

On behalf of the Chairman, the Board and myself I am delighted to welcome Brandon E. Fountain to our organization and family. Brandon will be in charge of Development. We eagerly look forward to working together and feel that Brandon's contribution will be significant.

If someone doesn't intervene, William Glenn Boyd will be executed Thursday for a terrible crime he committed a quarter century ago.

To some, no doubt, putting Boyd to death represents justice and a fitting end to an awful saga. In particular, those who loved Fred and Evelyn Blackmon might welcome Boyd's execution, and we can't blame them for that.